Father Goriot
Mme. Vauquer (_nee_ de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for the past forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. Her house (known in the neighborhood as the _Maison Vauquer_) receives men and women, old and young, and no word has ever been breathed against her respectable establishment; but, at the same time, it must be said that as a matter of fact no young woman has been under her roof for thirty years, and that if a young man stays there for any length of time it is a sure sign that his allowance must be of the slenderest. In 1819, however, the time when this drama opens, there was an almost penniless young girl among Mme. Vauquer's boarders. That word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has been overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of dolorous literature; but it must do service again here, not because this story is dramatic in the restricted sense of the word, but because some tears may perhaps be shed _intra et extra muros_ before it is over. Will any one without the walls of Paris understand it? It is open to doubt. The only audience who could appreciate the results of close
may take well to heart. He ought to know and to remember this: that
his life was the price of hers; she was extinguished that he might
shine, and he owes it to her that the flame of his torch be as white as
the altar's from which it was kindled.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing, then, in the character of his
mother--which, please God, he will have, or, getting all things else,
he can never be a gentleman--was honor. It shone from her countenance,
it ran like melody in her voice, it made her eyes the most beautiful in
expression that I have ever seen, it enveloped her person and demeanor
with a spiritual grace. Honor in what are called the little things of
life, honor not as women commonly understand it, but as the best of men
understand it--that his mother had. It was the crystalline, unshakable
rock upon which the somewhat fragile and never to be completed
structure of her life was reared.
If he be anything of a philosopher, he may reason that this trait must
have made his mother too serious and too hard. Let him think again.
It was the very core of soundness in her that kept her gay and sweet.
I have often likened her mind to the sky in its power of changeableness
from radiant joyousness to sober calm; but oftenest it was like the
vault of April, whose drops quicken what they fall upon; and she was of
a soft-heartedness that ruled her absolutely--but only to the
unyielding edge of honor. Yet she did not escape this charge of being
both hard and serious upon the part of men and women who were used to
the laxness of small misdemeanors, and felt ill at ease before the
Mme. Vauquer (_nee_ de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for the past forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. Her house (known in the neighborhood as the _Maison Vauquer_) receives men and women, old and young, and no word has ever been breathed against her respectable establishment; but, at the same time, it must be said that as a matter of fact no young woman has been under her roof for thirty years, and that if a young man stays there for any length of time it is a sure sign that his allowance must be of the slenderest. In 1819, however, the time when this drama opens, there was an almost penniless young girl among Mme. Vauquer's boarders. That word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has been overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of dolorous literature; but it must do service again here, not because this story is dramatic in the restricted sense of the word, but because some tears may perhaps be shed _intra et extra muros_ before it is over. Will any one without the walls of Paris understand it? It is open to doubt. The only audience who could appreciate the results of close